So, it's been quite a long time since my last post--almost a year and a half. I sort of forgot about it, to be honest. I'm feeling my creative impuses, and decided to use them while they're here...
So, I have been thinking a lot lately about balance. Not in the "fall off the beam" sort of way, but in the "all parts of life" way. Balance is something that I preach to my patients often. Why? Because having a quiet mind starts with having a balanced life. Now, if only it were as easy to do as to say!
Often clients will come to me and talk about how stressed they are about one particular aspect of their life. We all go through stressors, but what makes this dangerous (or more difficult) is that when more than one area of our lives is out of balance, we really struggle. Let me try to explain. We all function in differing roles of our life...friendships (social), extended and immediate family relationships, work or hobbies, etc. So, when one of these areas is out of alignment, we rely on the others to provide some stability for us. The problem is, none of these areas is always stable. So, they morph in and out of various levels of stability. When we encounter long term stress in one area, or high levels of stress in multiple areas at once, it reduces or eliminates some of the stability. Still with me? So, when work is stressful, I can still feel some respite when I go home, or when I work on my hobby, or I can get support from my friends or family. When I am stressed at work, fighting with my spouse (not that that ever happens...) low on the financial side, cant work on my hobby, struggling with friendships, and so on, this is when the stress REALLY hits home. Suddenly, I dont have calm in the other areas of my life to depend on, and there is only chaos.
So, what to do about this? How to manage this when it does happen? Well, first off, be familiar with your roles in life. Understand the different directions that you are being pulled in. Evaluate these roles. Is there a role that is ALWAYS stressful to you? Constant stress in one role puts you in a dangerous position if some event happens in another role that you dont have control over. Now you are teetering in that place of multiple stressors, the dangerous ground where you are losing stability....So, if the first is to understand and evaluate your roles, what is the next step? Carefully examine those roles that have constant stress. What can you do to resolve some of it? Maybe this is a big step, like beginning a job search, or asking your spouse to take on some of the household responsibilities. Maybe it's a smaller step, like reaching out to someone to talk to when you need to. And maybe, just maybe, it means talking to a therapist to help you sort this out*.
Now, please understand something. I'm not saying that you can't function with multiple areas of stress. Realistically, there are things that happen that we may not be able to control...your kid gets sick on the day of the biggest work presentation of your career, or your spouse accidentally unplugs your alarm clock and you oversleep for your final exam. Things happen. If they are short term things, they are manageable for most people for a while. When we have long term stress, it impacts our body, our mental health, and our other relationships.
I just want to mention one other point about balance, and then I will step off my soapbox. I also find an astounding number of people who tell me things like, "I always used to like to ______, but I just dont do it anymore". Sometimes there is good reason for this (an injury that keeps you from running, for instance), but often the reason is just because they can't find the time, or they dont have the motivation. I find that sometimes the hobby is something that connects them to a whole other side of themself--an artistic person who is no longer drawing or sculpting, for example. A writer not writing, and so on. If there is a part of you that you have always enjoyed exercising, and you are no longer using it, it starts to eat at you. It starts slowly, but eventually becomes this gaping hole that eats away until it occurs to us...HEY! I'm not writing/running/drawing/sewing/building anymore! I believe that this is also about balance. It's about understanding the parts of ourselves that need to be accessed, and exercising them, in order to keep us in balance. Well, I think that's enough for today. I'm excited to work this blog again. This is me, striving for my own balance. I have a list of topics I intend to get to, including therapist frustration, depression, hypnosis, and others...stay tuned!
*shameless plug for therapy.
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